Kathryn Creedy
, ContributorI cover trends in aviation, aircraft, airlines as well as travel.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Consider that for a moment. Sin taxes are designed to discourage use. But that same mentality applies to an industry we should encourage because it contributes $1.3 trillion to the economy every year. Taxes on passengers have unnecessarily skyrocketed 400% over the past two decades so the federal tax bite on a typical, $300 domestic round trip, one-stop ticket, is $63.

Taxpayers heavily subsidize both rail and public transit. Aviation, on the other hand, is heavily taxed and is the only transport mode completely funded by users. These taxes and fees go into the Aviation Trust Fund to pay for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system and its modernization. The problem is, the money goes in but its use in improving the system is a 50-year failure.

Why should we care? If the government were actually to spend the money, it might mitigate the 28% of delays and cancellations that result from ATC congestion and weather. Another consideration is the fact that airline-caused disruptions, delays and cancellations cost passengers $8.5 billion in time lost, missed connections and missed travel activity, according to the U.S. Travel Association (USTA). Delays and cancellations keep nearly one in five travelers from completing their trip, according to a 2013 Phocuswright and Amadeus study. They cost the economy $30 billion annually, according to Airlines for America (A4A). Delays and cancellations were cited by passengers as two major factors in why they abandoned aviation altogether. That decision, costing 38 million lost trips, resulted in the loss to the economy annually of $85 billion and 900,000 jobs, according to the USTA.

Much has been written about this problem, including yesterday’s story from The Associated Press about record-breaking increases in taxi times to and from the gate because of congestion. Not to worry, say airlines, those increases are baked into the schedule so you’ll arrive on time. But that is the problem.

Airlines have padded schedules to improve their still-miserable on-time rate so that a flight between New York and Washington, which took 50 minutes in 1960s, now takes well over an hour. Or, instead of taking the five hours it took in the 1960s to traverse the American continent, it now takes seven thanks to changes in airline networks, hubs and padded schedules. Airlines pad so they can game the system by making you think you arrived “on time” when, in fact, only 60% of flights are on time. DOT would have you believe the on-time rate is in the high 70s or low 80s but that counts only arrivals within 15 minutes of scheduled time, not on time arrivals.

Ironically, it was the industry that first talked about this so-called schedule creep in trying to bolster support for trust fund expenditures to make the ATC system more efficient. But there is more to the story than just pointing the finger at ATC and Congress as so brilliantly reported by Dan Reed in his Forbes series Airlines' 40% Failure Rate: 850,000 Passengers Will Arrive Late Today -- And Every Day Airlines have a share in the blame as well.

Even so, airlines are sticking with their solution and pushing for privatization. If the solution were only to develop steady expenditures of the Aviation Trust Fund for its intended purpose, I would favor it. I’ve been decrying the state of the Aviation Trust Fund for decades – since the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan railed against Washington money laundering in the 1980s when he called on Congress to put trust back in the trust funds, which collect money for social security, highways and aviation. Instead of spending that money, he charged, Congress holds it back in a shell game to make the deficit look smaller.

Thirty years later, the situation remains unchanged except that Congress is getting bolder evidenced by the recent highway bill, now in conference between the two houses, that would transfer aviation security fees specifically designed to pay for costs related to aviation security after 9/11 to the decimated Highway Trust Fund. The security fees Congress targets amount to $5.60 per one-way ticket or $11.20 per trip per passenger. Congress could have provided a much-needed raise to the gasoline tax used to fund the Highway Trust Fund but chose instead to raid the security fund. The airline industry is currently considering whether or not to test the legality of the move.